What can the artifacts, materials, and objects we leave behind say about our lives? The combs, dolls, writing slates, sewing needles, scraps of clothing, and pieces of pottery pulled out of the ground at the Dorchester Industrial School for Girls site left clues about the lives of the women and girls who made their home at the school. But who were these women? Why were they there? What were their stories, and could they be uncovered from the recesses of time?
To find out, Boston City Archaeologist Joseph Bagley and his team partnered with public historian Dr. Jane Becker and her graduate students at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. Inspired by the preliminary research of two UMass Boston historical archaeology graduate students on Joe Bagley’s team – Sarah Johnson and Madelaine Penney – in spring semester 2017, members of the graduate history seminar, Interpreting History in Public: Approaches to Public History Practice, began extensive biographical research into 16 women and girls who studied, worked, and lived at the Dorchester Industrial School for Girls.
In 2017 our graduate students collaborated with the City Archaeologist to create a public platform that begins to explore the histories of the students and staff and managers who lived at or supported the Industrial School for Girls—Dorchester. The resulting online exhibition Uncovering the Dorchester Industrial School for Girls focuses on the 1860s: the board of managers, and students, teachers and matrons who lived at the school in the early years of occupancy at the Centre Street property. This online exhibition is built on a WordPress blog that presents the research and invites feedback from the public. We continued the work in in Spring 2018, focusing again on the personal stories of these girls and women, now bringing these histories into dialogue with the rich material culture that archaeologists removed from the site.
Artifacts found at the site of the archaeological survey provide an important source of information about the life and work of the students and staff at the ISFG. This collection of found materials offers important evidence regarding the details of everyday life at the school, information extracted from the remains of clothing and adornments, household and school items, for example. This material culture can offer more meanings, however, when we know more about the users, makers, and consumers of these goods. Other historical evidence, such as census records, street directories, and vital records, provide evidence of the lives of the individuals associated with the ISFG, and thus help historians and archaeologists understand the significance of the material evidence from the ground and its relationship to the lives of these 19th century women. Our historical research and interpretation focuses on three groups of women associated with the ISFG in the 1860s and 1870s—students, staff who worked or lived on site, and officers or managers who supported and directed the organization. With little more than their subjects’ names and definitive location in 1860, the historians worked backward to find official records, personal papers, and photographs. UMass and the Boston City Archaeology team also worked with the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University, which generously made the records of the Dorchester Industrial School for Girls accessible to our team, and facilitated use of the collection for this website. The material culture retrieved from archaeology at the School’s site, and the ISFG admissions logs and secretary records provide rich historical resources.
Stay tuned. We have more to do!